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Adapting to Covid-19

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Table of Contents

2020 has been a very strange year so far, bringing with it new challenges. As we are preparing to open again on the 6th July, we have had to adapt our business in keeping with government guidelines to keep both our crew and passengers as safe as possible at this time.

Below, we have outlined some of the changes we have had to make in order to adapt. Please bear in mind that this is all new to us too so we may not be doing everything perfectly, but we are doing our best to keep everyone’s best interests in mind whilst keeping our business running after a difficult start to the year. Please be patient with us and if you think we are doing anything wrong, please speak to us as this is a learning curve for us all!

BOOKING PROCESS

Our booking office on the harbour will be open for passengers to come and check in with us and for general enquiries, however, in order to maintain social distancing, we ask that passengers book via our website or over the phone rather than coming to our office to do so. When at the office, we ask that our passengers remain behind the barrier marked out on the ground in front of the office.

Due to losing out on half of our season this year and having to carry a reduced capacity, we are currently unable to offer any discounts including vouchers and infant prices. This is with great regret as we pride ourselves on making our trips as accessible and affordable as we can to all, however, in order to help our business survive through this tricky financial time, we have had to make this difficult decision. Once we are able to run at full capacity, we will reinstate our discounts and infant prices. We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

ON BOARD

*UPDATE*  We will be carrying up to 10 passengers per boat leaving about a metre between you and the people in front/behind and will never sit you next to anyone not on your booking. When you book yourself in, we ask that you make one booking per family group or bubble so that we know not to sit you next to anyone not in your household or bubble. We do ask that all passengers come with a face mask or covering for their trip including any children over 10, unless they cannot wear a face covering on medical grounds. Your guides will all be wearing face masks for loading passengers on and passing by along the sides of the boat, but may need to remove their masks to speak to the whole boat and give their tour. This will be done from a safe distance, however, and if the guide needs to come any closer to the passengers, they will be wearing masks while they do so. To avoid any hand to hand contact, we will not be able to physically help passengers on and off the boat so we ask that all passengers are physically capable of boarding by themselves, or with the help of their party.

HYGIENE

At our office there will be hand sanitising facilities available for all passengers to use before and after your trip. We ask that all passengers use hand sanitiser before boarding and they will be available for you to use once you hand back your life jackets. We have enough life jackets that you will never be taking a life jacket straight from another person. You will collect your own life jacket from the office which will have been sanitised using a professional disinfectant, and you will hand it back to the office after your trip for it to be disinfected again. We will be handing out waterproof trousers and treating them the same way as the life jackets, however, we would prefer not to hand out waterproof jackets so we ask you to please bring your own to keep you warm and dry. Even if the weather looks good, please bring one as it gets really cold out on the water and getting wet is a very real possibility!

Instead of running our trips back to back as we have done in the past, we have allowed intervals to provide us with enough time to spray down the boat with professional disinfectant which works quickly to sanitise the boat between trips.

We hope that these measures put your mind at ease that we are doing everything we can to keep you safe. If you have any issues with our protocol, we ask that you speak to us directly so we can improve wherever we can. Although doing our utmost to protect our passengers and staff, we cannot 100% guarantee that we can protect you from transmission of Coronavirus and ask that you take your own measures to keep yourself safe, such as wearing a mask or face covering, avoiding touching your face and washing your hands or using hand sanitiser before and after your trip.

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